‘Iran scientist murder out of despair’

A senior Iranian judicial official condemns the recent assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran as a desperate act by enemies to hinder the Islamic Republic’s scientific progress.

Iran’s Deputy Judiciary Chief Seyyed Ebrahim Raeisi said on Saturday that the United States should know that the desperate assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan cannot impede or undermine Iran’s nuclear advancement as the country has already acquired an atomic technology capability.

He stated that Iran will spare no efforts to identity and prosecute the perpetrators of the criminal act.

Ahmadi Roshan was targeted on January 11, when an unknown motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car near a college of Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran. He was immediately killed and his driver, who sustained injuries, died a few hours later in hospital.

He was a chemical engineering graduate of the prominent Sharif University of Technology and served as the deputy director of marketing at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

The deadly incident happened as some of the US presidential hopefuls in November 2011 had openly called for conducting covert operations ranging from assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists to launching a military strike on Iran as well as sabotaging Tehran’s nuclear program.

The assassination calls have been anything but idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been killed in cold blood over the past few years. Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi are among the victims of these acts of terror.

On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were targeted by terrorist attacks. Shahriari was killed immediately but Dr. Abbasi, the current director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, sustained injuries.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry blasted on Friday the US and UK governments for their obvious roles in assassinating the Iranian scientist in two strongly-worded letters of protest to the two countries.

“The Islamic Republic reserves the right to follow up on the issue accordingly,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry said.

According to reports, Ahmadi Roshan had recently met International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, a fact which indicates that the IAEA has leaked information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and scientists.